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Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Yehuda HaLevi by Hillel Halkin

Over the the summer I posted about my review of this wonderful book. I wished that the Hebrew to the poems was included in the book, but I kept that wish to myself - because the book was so great and I came to praise.

7 Comments:

Thanks for this. I think Halkin is an excellent writer. I've just checked out one of the poems, though, about a jug of wine, and I see real problems with the translation. For example, כ"ד is not "two and four," but "twenty and four." No doubt the difficulties of translation while preserving a rhyme scheme are the cause of some of what I'm complaining about, but surely not in that example.

Oh, I understood the problem. But since he in any case could not replicate the pun, he should at least have gone for the correct translation! His solution is incorrect in both the "to and for" phrase, which does not exist in the original Hebrew, and in the "two and four" phrase, which is a false translation.

I have problems with his rendering of the "libi bamizrach" poem too. Halkin's versions read nicely enough on their own, but he takes far too many liberties with the translation and meaning, in my opinion.

His approach is to take liberties and come across with a smooth sounding English adaptation. This is controversial. About a year ago Halkin and another HaLevi translator shared a podium. As an exercise they distributed a poem they'd each translated. The audience was asked to note the differences. the most glaring difference, was that Halkinn chose to omit one stanza! He felt it just wouldn't flow well in English with that piece left in. His counterpart felt strongly - as I sense that you, "Keshke" do - that a translator can't do that. It's a rough call, but my leanings are actually with Halkin here. His translations of HaLevi are part of what made the book so strong, halkin's masterpiece.